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Table of Contents
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Introduction
What is Who Not How, and why should it matter to you?
What are you trying to accomplish?
- Do you have Whos in your life that give you the perspectives, resources, and ability to go beyond what you could do alone?
- OR, are you keeping your goals so small to make them easier to accomplish them on your own?
- It can be easy to focus on How, especially for high achievers who want to control what they can control, which is themselves
- It takes vulnerability and trust to expand your efforts and build a winning team
- It takes wisdom to recognize that:
- Other people are more than capable enough to handle much of the Hows
- Your efforts and contribution (your "Hows") should be focused exclusively where your greatest passion and impact are
- Result, not effort, is the name of the game
A new and better question
- You must stop asking yourself, "How can I accomplish this?"
- That question, although common, leads to mediocre results, frustration, and a life of regrets
- A much better question is: "Who can help me achieve this?"
"WHO" creates results, "HOW" creates problems
- Real leadership is: Creating and clarifying the vision (the "what"), and giving that vision greater context and importance (the "why") for all Whos involved
- Once the "what" and "why" have clearly been established, the specified "Who" or "Whos" have all they need to go about executing the "how"
- All the leader needs to do at that point is support and encourage the Who(s) through the process
- When you're trying to accomplish something challenging or difficult that you've never done before, you probably need a Who
- If you're committed to specific results, then at some point or other, you're going to have to face the truth that results are produced by Whos, not Hows
Delegation Is Not Exploitation
- Who Not How is about teaching you how to focus on what you can do, and then finding other Whos to do what they can do
- No Who is viewed as better or more important the other
- All Whos are essential to getting the project done
"Who" Transforms and Expands Vision
- With the right Whos in place, your vision and purpose will expand dramatically
- Freedom of Purpose: Your purpose and vision expand when you have powerful Whos who can take your goals to places you couldn't have imagined yourself
- Transformational Relationships, as opposed to to Transactional ones, are entered into for the purpose of change and growth
- In Transformational relationships, all parties give more than they take — There is an abundance mind-set, and an openness to novelty and change
- Rather than viewing people or services as a "cost", as in the transactional mind-set, everything is viewed as an investment, with the possibility of 10X, 100X, or even. bigger returns and change
Let The "Who" Do The "How"
- Not only must the Who fully own the How, but they must have complete permission to do so
- If you're going to apply higher levels of teamwork in your life, you'll need to relinquish control over how things get done
Transformational Leaders Give The Vision and Get out of The Way
- A core aspect of leadership is being explicit about the vision
- The more explicit you are in what you wnat, the faster you'll attract the right Whos to help you achieve that vision
- The leader explains the "What" and "Why" and then allows the "Who" to execute the "How"
Part 1: Freedom of Time
Chapter 1: "Whos" Create Abundance and Self-Expansion
- The power of having a Who is that you instantly get access to knowledge, insights, resources, and capabilities that are not currently available to you
- "How" is linear and slow
- "Who" is non linear, instantaneous, and exponential
- You already have several Whos all around you — Your life is filled with Whos that serve specific and unique roles, enabling you to be and do what you otherwise could not
- We all have Whos in our lives we rely on, who help us achieve our goals and support us in various ways — Likewise, we are all Whos to other people, providing some form of support of connection they need or want
Avoiding The "How" Trap
- When you have a Self-Managing Company of Capable Whos, you work less but accomplish much more
- Your Whos manage themselves; they aren't managed by you
- Your Whos have full responsibility for how they handle themselves because you've made the vision abundantly clear and exciting — You've then given them full ownership over executing and achieving the vision in whatever way suits them
- Your team should operate seamlessly without you — This should be the goal of every entrepreneur
- Having freedom to relax, recover, play, or do whatever you want is crucial for entrepreneurial creativity, success, and longevity
- Only 16% of creative insights happen while you're at work — You need time and space, and most important, relaxation and recovery, to allow ideas and solutions to ferment and form
- When the why is strong enough, you get real, you get serious
"Whos" Are How You Expand as a Person
- Our attraction to specific people is based on two factors:
- Desirability: the perceived total amount of self-expansion that is possible for us through that specific relationship
- Probability: the perceived likelihood that a close relationship with that specific individual can actually be formed
- If you're focused on doing everything yourself, then you are dramatically limiting the resources you can direct toward your goals — If your resources are limited, your potential, your options, and your future are limited too
- As you combine your efforts with other Whos, your efficacy immediately increases
- Relationships are how you transform as a person and how you transcend your current limitations
- Relationships are how you produce results
- Why ask How, when your motivation and efficacy have far more to do with your relationships than your perceived abilities?
- Ultimately, anyone who becomes highly successful does so through relationships
- The more people you are a Who for, the more successful you will become
- The best way to measure your progress is by noting the amount and quality of collaborations happening in your life
- Take a look at your life right — Think broadly about this and consider more than just your business:
- If we aren't fully sold on our goals ourselves, why would we include others in our goals?
- It is actually the investment in Whos that strengthens your own commitment to your goals
- As you get others involved, that action enhances your desire and motivation to get serious and get focused
- "Who" is about getting the desired result as effectively as possible
Where are you lacking collaboration and teamwork?
Where is your vision so small that you're doing everything by yourself?
Where do you need more Whos to help you accomplish what you ultimately want to do?
What relationships do you already have that are being under-utilized?
Do you have Whos in your vision for your health?
What about your vision for your family?
Are there potential Whos involved involved in any other passions and hobbies you have?
Chapter 2: The Truth About Procrastination and How to Kill it
- Most people spend the majority, if not the entirety, of their lives putting off the things that matter most
- Personal confidence comes from making progress toward goals that are far bigger than your present capabilities
- Confidence is belief in your ability to imagine, conceptualize, and achieve goals — It is the foundation of imagination
- Procrastination leads to a small self-image and an increasingly smaller future for yourself
The Shocking and Exciting Truth about Procrastination
- What procrastination means is that your goal or ambition is great — It's something you'd like for yourself, but you're not the right person to execute the plan to achieve it, at least not right now
- You need a Who to get you through whatever stage you're in, because at the moment, you're clearly not the Who in possession of the needed knowledge or capability — If you were, you wouldn't be procrastinating
- Procrastination is wisdom, if you listen to it
- The question is: Will you find that help or just sit by yourself?
- You only have two options when you procrastinate
- How do I do this? How is the question society and our public education system have trained us to ask the moment we have a goal or desire
- Who can help me with this? Who can achieve this goal for me? Who has the skills, knowledge, connections, and expertise to get this done ASAP?
- Procrastination is the by-product of having a goal and asking "How?" instead of "Who?"
- Applying Who Not How, and thus killing procrastination, requires two essential steps:
- Be radically explicit about your goals
- Ask yourself: Who can help me accomplish this goal?
#1: Be Radically Explicit About Your Goals
- A tool that helps to define the vision, what successful completion of the project looks like, and why it is so important, is the Impact Filter
- What is the project?
- Purpose: What do you want to accomplish?
- Importance: Whats the biggest difference this will make?
- Ideal Outcome: What does the completed project look like?
- Best Result: If you do take action?
- Worst Result: If you don't take action?
- Success Criteria: What has to be true when this project is finished?
#2: Ask Yourself: Who Can Help Me Accomplish This Goal?
- All sorts of limiting beliefs will flood through your mind, trying to get you to focus on the Hows, not the Whos
- It takes courage and leadership to get other people involved
- The purpose of the Impact Filter is first to sell yourself on the vision, because you can't sell other people unless you're sold yourself
- One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs and leaders make: micromanaging their Whos and insisting that their do their jobs in a particular way, when the only thing that matters is the end result
- Once success has been defined, restrain yourself from need to know or care "How" it gets done — Your only concern should be that it gets done
- Let your Who do their How
Chapter 3: Find Whos For All Aspects of Your Life
- Who Not How is about results, not an obsession with "process"
- Allow your Whos to worry about the How and trust them to achieve the desired result within the designated timeframe
- Start by simply eliminating all tasks or distractions that are unnecessary to your future self
Every 90 Days, Maximize Your Time and Make Huge Progress
- Breaking down your goals into 90-day increments is good for focus and motivation
- By chunking down your goals into smaller steps, you can focus more directly on what is right in front of you
- You can make tangible and short-term progress, and then look back every 90 days and measure tangible progress
- The one-page Moving Future process:
- Looking back over the past quarter, what are the things you have achieved that make you proudest?
- What are the current areas of focus and progress that make you the most confident?
- Looking ahead at the next quarter, what new developments, projects, or goals are giving you the greatest sense of excitement?
- What are the five new "jumps" (progress) you can now achieve that will make your next 90 days a great quarter regardless of what else happens?
Part 2: Freedom of Money
Chapter 4: Time Creates Money
- You can't improve your money freedom without increasing the Whos in your life
- If you have enough money to solve a problem then you don't have a problem
- From Dean Jackson's perspective, there are two types of problems in business: technical and adaptive
- Technical problems are when the answer is already known — You just need to find out how to do it
- It's optimal to ask, "Who can do this for me?"
- The problem with asking"How?" is that you're basically telling yourself, "I'm willing to spend my finite attention on this task — finding out how to learn it, learning it, actually doing it, and one day, maybe, training someone else on how to do it"
- This line of thinking negatively impacts your Freedom of Money
- Freedom of Money occurs as you direct your time and attention toward higher impact activities
- Adaptive problems do not have a known answer
- These problems require a creator — That's where you are the "Who"
- Everything that has ever been invented or innovated was done by a Who, acting as a creator, solving an adaptive problem
Free Up Your Mind And Energy by Doing Way Less
- Having lots of things on your mind and weighing decisions can really exhaust your energy and willpower called decision fatigue
- With a freed-up mind, you can begin creatively expanding your vision
- You can see new opportunities not previously considered
- You can invest in education, mentorships, or collaborations
- When you free up your time, you free up your mind
- With a free mind, your thinking will go to a higher level
- As you become successful the demands on you will increase, and then you'll need Whos to handle as well as shield you from most off those demands, or you'll get overrun and bogged down
- "Flow" which is pure absorption in what you're doing can become increasingly difficult to produce as one becomes more successful
- Beyond keeping you out of flow, making lots of decisions exhausts your willpower and ultimately drains your vision
- Ask the question: What ares of your life and business most need a Who right now?
- The more decisions you have to make, the lower the quality of those decisions will become — You need to make fewer, but better decisions
- You need pressure to succeed — You add that pressure by increasing your investment
- This forces you to better use your time, which enables you to increase your income capacity of Freedom of Money
Chapter 5: Commit To Specific Results
- Every time you invest in a vision, your commitment to that vision increases
- Transformational leaders embody four characteristics:
- Individualized Consideration: You act as a mentor or coach to each member, and listen to concerns and needs
- Intellectual Stimulation: You challenge people's assumptions, take risks, and solicit ideas from your team
- Inspirational Motivation: You articulate a vision that is appealing and inspiring to your team
- Idealized Influence: You act as a role model for high ethical behaviour, you instill a positive pride and create a culture among your team, and you gain respect and trust
- If you want greater freedom in your life, you'll need to focus on results
- According to Self-Determination Theory, every human being has three basic psychological needs related to their work:
- A sense of competence
- Autonomy in how they do their work
- Positive and meaningful relationships
- Autonomy without clarity is ultimately a disaster
- Instead of providing radical clarity, giving profound trust and autonomy, and being committed to the results and flexible to the process, too many leaders obsessively micromanage the process of their Whos
- It is not the role of the leader to explain how the job is done — All the Who needs is clarity about what specifically "done" looks like
- By having clear Success Criteria, meaning what has to be true when this project is finished, you can ensure your Who doesn't get lost
- The constrain established by the Success Criteria are essential for the Who being motivated, because they clarify the Who's path but also provide complete autonomy in how they create the result
Chapter 6: If You Have Enough Money To Solve A Problem, You Don't Have A Problem
- Trying to do all the Hows is the normal way of doing things for most people
- Our culture has brainwashed us into avoiding costs than making powerful investments in ourselves and our futures
- As a result, we willingly do all sorts of "busy" or ineffective work outside our expertise and passion, falsely believing that "working hard" or engaging in such tasks is worth it
- Although having a great work ethic is something to strive for, you've got to be careful — You're either int he "Time and Effort Economy" or the "Results Economy"
- Far too often people wear their hard work as a badge of honor
- If you're cost-minded, then by nature, you're transactional and short-term focused
- If you're investment-minded than you will be transformational in your relationships, including the relationship you have with yourself
- By shifting your focus from cost to investment, you stop worrying about what you're giving up and instead, realize that by making powerful decisions you can make enormous gains
- Trying to avoid costs by engaging in Hows will cost you and your future huge in the long run
Part 3: Freedom of Friendship
Chapter 7: How To Be A Good Who For Others
- True Freedom of Relationship, which means you have not only increasing access to whatever Whos you need to achieve your goals, but you also have deeper and higher quality relationships overall
- Your ability to succeed is based on the quality of the people in your life
Are You Drawn To Them?
- When it comes to connecting with someone, you should want to be connected with them — It shouldn't be a chore
You Must Create Value First
- Rather than asking, "What's in it for me?" which is the common question, you should ask, "What's in it for them?"
- Asking "What's in it for me?" is a terrible way to get access to people
- Avoid these types of people like the plague — They are takers, not givers
- Don't reach out to someone unless you have something meaningful to offer them
- If you want a relationship to continue, you must continue creating value
- Learn to serve other people without any expectation for reward
- Learn to serve other people without any expectation for reward
- If you're useful, and continue being generous, the world will be very good to you
- Never stop providing value to your Whos
The Supreme Importance Of Gratitude
- When you're grateful, people will want to help you more
- People have an innate need to be appreciated and valued
- Gratitude attracts and creates abundance
Chapter 8: How To Avoid The Wrong Whos, Even Highly Attractive Ones
- You Learn More About A Leader By What They Say "NO" To Than Anything Else
- When deciding whether to do something, if you feel anything less than 'Wow! That would be amazing! Absolutely! Hell yeah!' — then say "no"
- Always be the buyer — In every situation you're in, you should be the one who is buying, not selling
- The buyer can reject the seller, not the other way around
- You can become the buyer in all aspects of your life — You do this by rejecting anything that isn't in line with your vision
- When you begin saying "no" to people, obligations, and situation you don't feel fully aligned with in your gut, then and only then will you be able to expand your confidence and purpose
- In order to have Freedom of Relationship, you can no longer engage with people that don't align with your vision
Chapter 9: How To Create Effective Collaborations
- The first key to engaging in high-quality teamwork is to not think you know exactly what you're doing
- You've got to be open to other people's ideas, and you've got to realize that other people's ideas, solutions, or strategies can be far superior to your own (that's a good thing)
- You are only one person — As brilliant as you are, your current views are very limited at best
- By combining your perspectives and skills with those of others, your thinking and results can improve dramatically
Fast Feedback Loops With Encouragement (Apply The 80 Percent Rule)
- Rather than sitting by yourself, trying to perfect the idea without feedback, it's far more effective to throw your ideas out there fast, get feedback from your team, and then adjust as you go
- The faster you get at throwing out incomplete work, the faster it will transform into something great
- You can get to 80% of a project very quickly, such as writing a rough draft
- Going from 80% to 90% is exponentially more work than going from 0 to 80%
- You just need to do what you can do as the Who, and then quickly pass it off to the next Who
- The longer you try to perfect your idea before feedback, the slower the transformation process
- Get used to "publishing" or sending out imperfect work — Nothing is ever truly "finished", only "done"
- Done is better than perfect
Radically Open And Fast Communication (And Asking For Help)
- The sooner you can be open and honest with those around you about how you're feeling, the sooner things can start moving forward
- All progress starts by telling the truth
- Always make your learning greater than your experience
Genuinely Seek To Be A Hero To Your Team (Your "Whos")
For Success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself — Viktor Frankl
- If you genuinely want to be a hero to your collaborators, you'll show up for them, you'll do your best work, and you'll produce the needed results
Chapter 10: Stop Competing And Start Collaborating
- Freedom of Purpose is the sense of vision and purpose you have for your life
- The more deep and powerful your sense of purpose, the more meaningful your life will be
- When other Whos get involved, the project becomes more important and impactful — This is an example of expansion or Freedom of Purpose through Who Not How
- The antidote to being isolated in your goals is asking: "Who can help me accomplish this?"
- More and more people are seeking that is collaborative, flexible, and meaningful
- No matter how skillful you think you are, five years from now, those skills may not be valued
- But your ability to connect with people, learn, and collaborate is becoming increasingly valuable in today's society
- Focusing on "How" makes you rigid and non-collaborative in your thinking
- Competition stunts creative innovation and limits your future
Chapter 11: Whos Expand Your Vision And Purpose
- When driven by purpose, you stop doing the minimum required
- Only through Whos can your purpose and life be transformed and expanded
- Whos help you see potential in your future, and in your work, that you can't presently see for yourself
- Whos expand your vision, giving you the confidence to pursue big goals
- Your Whos become your purpose
Conclusion
- Every Who matters, and every Who can be doing work they are genuinely passionate about
- By expanding your vision and by getting team members to help you attain that vision, you can focus on the few Hows that are your unique focus
- It all starts by setting a goal, a new bigger version of your own future
- Then your next step is to ask, "Who can help me do this?"
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